RAIL COMEBACK IN BRITAIN

It is being justified in terms of the Global Warming religion in order to make the British government bow down but the effect of reducing road congestion should be desirable to all. Mind you, turning the railway tracks into dedicated roadfreight highways would be infinitely more beneficial but that would require a government willing to REALLY upset the status quo

An unprecedented increase in freight trains will rid the motorway of 12,000 lorries a day but risks causing a decade of disruption for rail passengers. Network Rail, the rail infrastructure company, said yesterday that it will remove bottlenecks from its network to allow mile-long goods trains to operate between ports, power stations and distribution centres. It will also create room for an extra 120 freight trains a day by 2015, with bulk goods, such as imported coal, fuel and building materials, expected to fill much of the extra space. Each train will be able to carry 2,000 tonnes, the equivalent of 100 lorry loads. The boom in freight will reduce congestion on the roads but rail passengers may face delays from engineering works and are also more likely to find themselves stuck behind slow-moving freight trains.

Announcing Network Rail's frieght strategy for the next ten years, John Armitt, its chief executive, said: "We must maximise what rail can offer because otherwise we will end up with a lot more trucks on the road." He said that the increase in rail freight capacity would cost up to 500 million pounds, which would have to be funded by the Government. Ministers are committed to expanding rail freight but have said that decisions on the future level of rail spending would be made next summer.

In addition to laying extra lines on routes that have only a single track, Network Rail said that it would widen dozens of bridges and tunnels to allow trains to carry the standard international size of freight container. It also promised to lengthen passing loops - the parallel stretches of track where freight trains wait while being overtaken by faster passenger services - on the East and West Coast Main Lines to accommodate longer trains.

Supermarkets have begun the switch back to rail, to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions caused by distribution and to improve their public image. Last month Tesco started moving non-perishable goods by train from the Midlands to its main Scottish distribution centre as part of a plan to save 4.5 million road miles a year and to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6,000 tonnes. It joins Asda, which moves its goods from southern ports to northern depots by rail. Other companies, including Sainsbury, Toyota and Nissan, have also announced plans to carry their less time-sensitive goods by rail, and even mail trains, which were all but dead in January 2004, have made a comeback.

EWS, Britain's largest rail freight company, said that trains produced a tenth of the harmful emissions of trucks per tonne carried. Network Rail proposes to increase the total weight of goods carried by train by 30 per cent by 2016. The growth will be higher when the long distance travelled by rail freight is taken into account. EWS predicts that the number of tonne-kilometres - the industry's preferred measurement, which multiplies the number of tonnes by the number of kilometres travelled - will be 50 per cent up on current levels by 2015. That would restore rail freight to the level last achieved in the 1950s, when steam trains still dominated the network Graham Smith, EWS's planning director, said that the growth would be achieved only if the Government addressed the unfair advantage enjoyed by road hauliers. "We welcome Network Rail's vision for growth, but it will not happen unless the costs of using the rail infrastructure are made more affordable," he said. "We are being undercut by road hauliers coming from Europe, where they buy cheaper fuel and pay lower wages to Eastern European drivers."

EWS is lobbying against the Rail Regulator's proposal to double track access charges paid by freight operators. It said that it may have to cancel all goods trains through the Channel Tunnel from November 30, when the public subsidy for cross-Channel rail freight ceases. EWS is facing additional costs of 8,000 pounds a train for using the tunnel, but says that it can afford only 500 pounds a train.

Mr Armitt said that Network Rail's predictions assumed Britain's continued reliance on imported coal for power generation in the next ten years. "Even if we see a new nuclear programme, that will take time to deliver and may only deliver 20 to 25 per cent of generating capacity, so there will still be big demand for coal," he said.

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Biotech forests

Last March, activists at the 8th Conference of the Parties (COP-8) for the Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Curitiba, Brazil called for a global moratorium on genetically modified trees (GM trees). The activists claimed that genetically enhanced trees could harm the environment and the livelihoods of indigenous and local communities. In response, the COP-8 passed a resolution recommending the CBD signatories "take a precautionary approach when addressing the issue of genetically modified trees." The precautionary approach "recognizes that the absence of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing decisions where there is a risk of serious or irreversible harm." In general, it is chiefly decisions that would permit the deployment of new technologies that the precautionary approach postpones. We shall see that this line of attack cuts both ways when considering the effects of genetically enhanced trees.

In response to the COP-8 resolution, the United Nations Environment Programme is considering a global moratorium on the planting of genetically modified trees. UNEP is accepting comments on the proposed moratorium until September 1.

Are GM trees a danger to the natural environment? Opponents claim that the potential effects of GM trees include the contamination of native forests, the destruction of biodiversity and wildlife, loss of fresh water, the collapse native forest ecosystems, and cultural destruction of forest based traditional communities and severe human health impacts.

What biotech opponents mean by "contamination" is that GM trees could interbreed with conventional trees passing along their modified traits. That could happen, but is that a real threat to native forests? For example, one of the traits that biotechnologists have modified is boosting soft cellulose and reducing tough lignin fiber in wood. Such trees are easier to turn into paper and produce much less waste. However, trees with this bioengineered trait would have great difficulty surviving in the wild, so it is very unlikely to spread to native trees. Oregon State University forestry professor Steven Strauss dismisses activist concerns over GM trees somehow wiping out wild forests as "sheer nonsense." As for destroying biodiversity and wildlife, GM trees are much more likely to help than to harm. How? By boosting the productivity of tree plantations.

Opponents dismiss tree plantations as "green deserts" devoid of the natural biodiversity of wild forests. Actually, tree plantations do harbor a lot of wild species, but even if they didn't they would still offer significant environmental benefits. Right now about one-third of the world's industrial wood comes from tree plantations and if it could all come from tree plantations that would dramatically relieve pressure to harvest natural forests. An Israeli biotech company claims to have been able to engineer eucalyptus trees that grow four times faster than conventional trees. The modified trees are being field tested by a major Brazilian forestry company. If it works, this means that more trees can be grown on less land.

In fact, Roger Sedjo, a senior fellow at Resources from the Future notes that "all of the world's timber production could potentially be produced on an area roughly five to ten percent of the total forest today." Sedjo points out that this would mean that "more of the earth's forests could remain in their natural states, thereby maintaining continuous habitat for biodiversity conservation." It's hard to see what could be more eco-friendly than saving natural forests from loggers' axes.

What about the claim that biotech trees would harm indigenous and local communities? Again, to the extent that indigenous communities are directly dependent on native forest products and species for their livelihoods, reducing commercial pressure to cut down those forests will protect their traditional ways of life. Another concern is that forestry corporations in cahoots with developing country governments will expand tree plantations onto indigenous lands. Surely the better and more direct solution to problems caused by defective land tenure is to give indigenous people strong property rights to their land rather than banning biotech trees.

Biotechnology can also help protect and restore tree species that are threatened by pests and disease. For example, the American chestnut was devastated by an introduced fungal disease that killed more the 3.5 billion trees in the first half of the 20th century. These majestic trees could reach 100 feet in height and five feet in diameter. The chestnut had been the dominant hardwood species throughout the Appalachian Mountains. An enterprising squirrel, we are told, could travel from Maine to Georgia without touching the ground through the interlinked branches of chestnut trees. Now scientists at the University of Georgia and the State University of New York are investigating ways to insert blight-resistance genes into American chestnut artificial seed embryos. Thanks to biotechnology, the American chestnut could be restored later this century to the forests from which it has been missing for nearly two generations.

Looking at current silvicultural practices can also help clarify the benefits and risks involved with GM trees. "Many ecological criticisms of GM trees appear to be overstated," concludes a recent study by silviculturalists at Oregon State University. "The ecological issues expected from the use of GM poplars appear similar in scope to those managed routinely during conventional plantation culture, which includes the use of exotic and hybrid genotypes, short rotations, intensive weed control, fertilization and density control." For example, choosing to plant a conventional poplar or a poplar genetically modified to produce less lignin will have far fewer ecological effects than choosing between planting a poplar, modified or not, and a conifer species. "The specific changes in wood chemistry imparted by GM will be orders of magnitude less than the vast number of new chemicals that distinguish a pine from an aspen," notes the Oregon State study.

Some activists are not content to campaign for moratoriums backed by the United Nations. In 2001, the activists from the radical Environmental Liberation Front destroyed genetically modified trees at the University of Washington-Seattle and a poplar farm in Oregon.

Recall that under the precautionary approach favored by anti-biotech activists the absence of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing decisions where there is a risk of serious or irreversible harm. By opposing biotech trees, it seems that the activists have gotten it backward. The risks to the environment, specifically to wild forests, are far too great to postpone further research and development of genetically enhanced trees. The only sensible conclusion is that imposing a United Nations' moratorium on GM trees risks serious and irreversible harm to the earth's wild forests.

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Greenie dam-hatred bears fruit in Australia

Brisbane could become the first capital city to wear harsh level-five water restrictions, which include a total ban on outdoor watering. Queensland Water Commission chairwoman Elizabeth Nosworthy said it was "almost inevitable" that level-four restrictions would be introduced in southeast Queensland at the end of next month. And if this summer is as dry as the last, when little rain fell in catchments, level-five restrictions could be introduced as early as next March.

Australia's capital cities have to date been able to avoid the level-five restrictions that have been imposed in regional centres such as Toowoomba in Queensland and Goulburn in NSW. Although water is a central issue in the Queensland election campaign, the Beattie Government has been tight-lipped about the forced water conservation measures, including the level-four restrictions set to be introduced after the poll this weekend.

Under level four, residents face mandatory swimming pool covers and a further crackdown on garden watering. At the same time, businesses will be forced to install water-saving devices, such as waterless urinals and water limiters on taps.

Ms Nosworthy said businesses would have to do much more to save water, but she indicated that the 180,000 swimming pool owners in southeast Queensland would be the main residential targets under level-four restrictions. She said 11 million litres of water were wasted every day through pool evaporation and mandatory covers were under consideration. "Pools is an issue that we really have to deal with," Ms Nosworthy told The Australian. "People in the community without pools would expect people with pools to be taking responsibility for doing the right thing." Industry sources put the average cost of a backyard pool cover at $500, with another $500 for a roller to operate it, but the state Government has promised rebates. Ms Nosworthy said level-four restrictions had not been finalised and proposals would be discussed with local councils at a meeting on September 11 - two days after the election.

Residents of Brisbane and other southeast Queensland centres were banned from using hoses under level-three restrictions earlier this year, with only buckets and watering cans being permitted for outdoor watering. Ms Nosworthy said that while buckets could now be used at any time, their use could be restricted under level-four rules to late afternoons and nights. She said restrictions might need to be phased in over time if, for instance, retail outlets did not have sufficient supplies of pool covers. It was unlikely residents would ever be able to again water gardens freely. "I think those days are over," Ms Nosworthy said.

Hawkins Home Garden Living Centres owner John Hawkins said more than 40 plant nurseries in southeast Queensland had been forced to close because of water restrictions, with the loss of 1000 jobs. He said the industry might not be able to withstand the impact of further restrictions. "Level five would wipe us out altogether," he said. Premier Peter Beattie has denied he called an early election to avoid community anger at level-four restrictions.

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

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